Posts Tagged ‘Missouri’

Egypt has urged the U.S to exercise restraint in dealing with demonstrations in Missouri, according to a Reuters report.

The official statement sounded very similar to the wording Obama used against Egypt in June 2013, when US President Obama “urged security forces to exercise maximum restraint and caution” when Egypt dealt with its Jihadi Muslim Brotherhood and deposed president Mohammad Morsi supporters.

Egypt doesn’t feel that Obama has treated them like a close ally ever since Morsi was deposed.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon activated the National Guard late Sunday night to deal with growing violence that has overflowed a midnight curfew for two nights running in the small city of Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis.

“Tonight, a day of hope, prayers and peaceful protests was marred by the violent criminal acts of an organized and growing number of individuals, many from outside the community and state, whose actions are putting the residents and businesses of Ferguson at risk,” Nixon said.

The violence was triggered by an incident on August 9 in which an unarmed black teenager, 18-year-old Michael Brown, was shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson.

But what might normally have been a local event has been blown into national prominence, with an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, commentary by President Barack Obama at the White House, and an additional probe by the St. Louis County police.

The governor has also provoked the ire of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, all of whom have asked him to rescind the state of emergency — and the curfew — in Ferguson.

The decision to deploy the National Guard was clearly not a frivolous spur-of-the-moment call, however. There had been a steady escalation in the violence in Ferguson, one that was being fed from outside. Protesters were gathering nightly — and during the day — to demonstrate, becoming increasingly violent.

Some of the “protesters” were armed, as police belatedly discovered on Sunday, and one protester shot another Sunday night, forcing security personnel to resort to tear gas and smoke cannisters in order to reach the injured man to get him to a hospital.

“On Twitter, we’ve seen people in Gaza tweet to protesters in Ferguson how to cope with teargas,” Mohamed Shehk, media and communications director of the Oakland-based ‘Critical Resistance’ group, told the UK-based newspaper The Guardian on Saturday.

A midnight curfew was slapped on Ferguson Saturday in an effort to get things back under control. Sunday saw churches packed with people praying for the teen and holding memorials in his memory. Among the attendees was police Captain Ronald S. Johnson, also a black man, who told the boy’s family during services at Greater Grace Church, “My heart goes out to you, and I say that I’m sorry. I wear this uniform, and I should stand up here and say that I’m sorry.” He spoke about his own son and about the youth in the neighborhood, speaking with hope for the future and about the need to pray.

The state attorney general, Chris Koster, also came to church at the Greater St. Mark Family Church in Ferguson. “You have lost a member of your community at the hands of a member of my community,” he said. “Not just the Caucasian community, but the law enforcement community. And that is painful to every good-hearted person in this city.”

In churches throughout the city, in fact, there were calls for grace, and calm by spiritual and community leaders alike.

But by nightfall, demonstrators were hurling firebombs (Molotov cocktails) at police and destroying local property as well. The state’s Highway Patrol was brought in to supplement the town’s local police force, but apparently more was required despite a vow by Johnson that his officers would “communicate” rather than resort to tear gas.

At the end, the tear gas was necessary, he said, in order to enable his officers to reach a protester who was shot by an armed rioter. The injured protester is listed in critical condition according to ABC News. A Highway Patrol spokesperson told media seven arrests were made and three people were injured; none were police officers.

The mayor of the Missouri hometown of the Passover Eve murdered has resigned after saying he agreed with some views of the suspected killer of three people at Jewish sites in suburban Kansas City, Kan.

Marionville, Mo. Mayor Dan Clevenger offered his resignation at a special Board of Aldermen meeting on Monday night after the aldermen had voted 4-1 to start impeachment proceedings against the mayor.

Residents who attended the meeting overwhelmingly called for his resignation or impeachment following his outrageous anti-Semitic comments made in response to the arrest of Frazier Glenn Miller, charged with the murders.

Clevenger, who was elected earlier this month, said he “kind of agreed with him on some things, but I don’t like to express that too much.”

Several years earlier he had offered a more robust endorsement of Miller in a letter sent to a local newspaper. He told the Springfield News-Ledger on Monday that he regrets writing the letter to the Aurora Advertiser about ten years ago, “I am a friend of Frazier Miller helping to spread his warnings. The Jew-run medical industry has succeeded in destroying the United State’s workforce.”

Clevenger also spoke of the “Jew-run government backed banking industry turned the United States into the world’s largest debtor nation,” KSPR News reported.

Miller, who also goes by the name Frazier Glenn Cross, has been charged in the fatal April 13 shootings of a man and his 14-year-old grandson outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park, Kan., and a woman outside the nearby Village Shalom retirement community.

Marionville resident Debbie Sallee told television station KOLR, “No matter what his personal beliefs are, he portrayed those on his interview as the Mayor of Marionville. And we are getting feedback from the community and the nation that if we elect a man like that to be our mayor of our city, that we must be like that, too, and that is very important people know that is not our city.”

Clevenger insisted that he is not a white supremacist and that he has “no doubt” he could fairly represent a Jewish resident.

The town’s local website notes that that are churches for Catholics, Mormons, Baptists and Methodists, among other Christian groups. It is not known if there is a single Jew living in the town, but census records show there are no blacks there.

President Barack Obama need not apply as a neighbor. The town voted 72 percent for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.

Not surprisingly, Missouri bills the town as “the home of the white squirrels.”

A white supremacist was executed in Missouri for killing a man at a St. Louis-area synagogue 25 years ago. The execution had been stayed Tuesday evening by two district court judges due to concerns over the drug used for the execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court early Wednesday morning upheld the death sentence and the use of the drug, leading to the execution.

Joseph Paul Franklin, 63, was executed early Wednesday morning for the sniper shooting of Gerald Gordon, who was killed outside of the Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel synagogue in October 1977 as he left a bar mitzvah. Franklin also was convicted of seven other murders throughout the United States and claimed credit for 20 deaths between the years of 1977 and 1980.

The Missouri conviction is the only one that carried a death sentence, according to The Associated Press.